(4) Street Haunting: A London Adventure

After reading Street Haunting: A London Adventure by Virginia Wolf, I was immediately reminded of a book I read several years ago entitled Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. This book describes the mind and its ability to make inferences without thinking and relying solely upon instinct. Similar to Virginia's essay, I felt that there was an emphasis placed on the ability to see things without fully appreciating their beauty and significance. We don't realize how we make inferences about individuals without fully comprehending their past.
"For the eye has this strange property; it rests only on beauty."
This quote was not only thought provoking but I found it as somewhat of an admonition. It's true, no matter how shallow it may sound, that the eye rests on beauty. The essay focused on people’s instinctive nature to place emphasis on physical characteristics as opposed to what truly defines a person- their inner beauty… something that cannot be seen by the naked eye. We tend to imagine other individuals' lives as peaceful and complacent, when in actuality, many are far from it. As Virginia passed several individuals, she made assumptions as to how their lives were panning out despite the fact that she was completely unaware as to how these people felt. The individual who piqued my interest was the midget; the woman whose face lit up when she was trying on shoes, but her happy disposition evaporated as she stepped outside. Virginia assumed that this woman was displeased with what she had to face outside, but she had no way of knowing this to be true. We ultimately are forced to make assumptions, and in most cases, this is done unintentionally. As Virginia mentioned later on in her essay, "One is forced to glimpse and nod and move on after a moment of talk, a flash of understanding, as, in the street outside."